After seeing their 2001 campaign overshadowed by bickering and infighting at board level, the disappointing Demons had no excuses for 2002 and an afl.com.au pre-season preview suggested the Demons would either finish in the bottom of the top eight or just miss out.

Describing his approach to the season Neale Daniher said "We were too inconsistent last year. We started strongly and we finished strongly but in-between we were down for too long, so this year we want to show a lot more consistency."

The only consistency they showed in the pre-season cup was losing all three games, finishing with a 107pt loss against Adelaide in the last group game.

In May, Carlton president John Elliot suggested the Demons were no longer relevant as a tenant at the MCG. The MFC and MCC disputed the claims, possibly made as retribution for the Demons criticism of Optus Oval after Melbourne had been forced to play two financially costly games there.

Neitz was the league's first league leading goalkicker since Fred Fanning more than 50 years before, and despite the raft of injuries and a mid-season slump the Demons made the finals where they easily accounted for North Melbourne before playing a modern classic against Adelaide. Five goals down, they went five goals up and somehow they still lost. A preliminary final against Collingwood had been thrown away despite Travis Johnstone playing his best game ever for the Demons.

The Demons used 32 players for the season, the equal least of any season since 1987.

Melbourne players on an end of season trip were caught up in the Bali Bombings. Steven Febey, Steven Armstrong and David Robbins were about to enter the Sari Club when a terrorist bomb exploded. Febey was thrown across the road in the blast, and the other two players were missing for hours afterwards. The rest of the team had already left Bali before the attack. Armstrong was forced to have a series of skin grafts on his leg after the attacks.

The club made a loss of $1.635 million for the year. This would have been closed to $2 million were in not for the dividend from the sale of Waverley. $100,000 of the loss was attributed to the election where Gabriel Szondy beat Joseph Gutnick at the end of 2001.